Richard H.B. Livingston – 50th Reunion Essay

Richard H.B. Livingston

151 Courts Lane

Hudson, NY 12534

College: Jonathan Edwards

The close rapport with my Yale buddies has not faded one iota in 50 years. Even for those I rarely communicate with, we pick up right where we left off—might as well be 1969 forever.

Not to say we haven’t changed—a lot. But the core trust and understanding, the bond, remains immutable. Thank you, Yale, for that, above all.

There was also, of course, the education. Yale honed my analytical ability, creative thinking and communication skills. It enabled me to engage with people of different non-WASP backgrounds and cultures. It opened my eyes to a universe of intellectual possibilities. But most importantly for me it provided the opportunity to row and to race at the varsity level. Many valuable life lessons were learned on the water which proved indispensable later in the game of life.

For me and perhaps most of us the real education started after we left New Haven. Yale never promised to prepare us for life, as in how to do something useful and get paid for it. It took me a year to figure out what kind of career made sense for me. It turned out to be the ocean shipping business, which was an engaging series of adventures for the next 23 years, including a two-year stint at business school. Shipping was followed by a second career in venture leasing, a hybrid of venture capital and high-risk lending, which kept me focused and busy until retirement in 2012.

Career aside, nothing seemed settled or profoundly meaningful until I discovered and married my soul mate, Liz Dubben, in 1976. Our daughters were born in 1979 and 1981 and all became right with the world. Both are now married with children.

Now that we are retired in rural upstate New York, I am reading the books I never had time for: history, biography, fiction, poetry, farming, environmentalism, off-the-grid living, etc. I am learning to be a vegetable gardener—chemical free. We go for long walks every day in this beautiful countryside. Nature surrounds us. I still dabble on some nonprofit boards. My 99-year-old mother needs company and some admin help. Our grandchildren’s visits are pure fun, at times inspirational, and a good workout.

For years I have thought of myself as having a conservative political bent, but sometime in the 1990s that morphed into something more akin to my ’60s generation roots. Now I prefer to set aside the ideologically charged “R” or “D” labels in favor of “P”—practical: what works long term, science based, humanistic and party blind. The older I get the more I am amazed at how ignorant I have been about this world. Perhaps I would have been less in the dark had I attended the Yale of today.